Young Margery sees an illustration of the golden beetle in her father's book and vows to find it someday.

Margery's father learns all four sons have died in battle, then takes a revolver and shoots himself in the garden.

Margery's students pass a cruel caricature of her appearance among themselves; the shock triggers her decision to change her life.

Margery steals the school gym teacher's lacrosse boots and flees the building in an impulsive act of rebellion.

Miss Hamilton cancels as Margery's assistant after the theft becomes known, forcing Margery to hire the erratic Enid Pretty instead.

Margery and Enid struggle to board their ship due to Enid's missing passport and Margery's suspicious equipment.

Enid rushes to claim Margery's overweight luggage as her own, getting both women aboard the flying boat to New Caledonia.

In Noumea, Enid disappears for hours and returns with a full set of the bug-catching equipment Margery needs.

Margery agrees to abandon bureaucratic delays and push into the mountains without waiting for official paperwork.

Enid reveals she is still pregnant and insists that her baby's survival is connected to Margery finding the beetle.

Enid opens her red valise and confesses that she suffocated her husband at his own request to end his suffering.

Mrs. Pope identifies Enid as the fugitive Nancy Collett and contacts the French police and the London newspapers.

On a final trip up the mountain, Margery finds herself surrounded by hundreds of living golden beetles and cannot bring herself to collect one.

Mundic arrives at the hut at gunpoint; Enid strikes him with a frying pan but is thrown off the veranda to her death.

Entomologist Freya Bartlett receives an anonymous photo of the golden beetle and immediately vows to travel to New Caledonia.

Margery Benson's lifelong obsession with a golden beetle begins at age ten, only to be buried under decades of grief and routine until a moment of humiliation at her school shocks her into action. She embarks on an expedition to New Caledonia with the unlikely Enid Pretty, and the two women overcome bureaucratic obstacles and personal friction to reach the island. Enid's resourcefulness proves indispensable as the expedition pushes into the mountains, and the women grow from reluctant partners into devoted friends. Danger closes in from all sides as a war-damaged stalker pursues them and the wife of the British consul attempts to expose Enid as a fugitive murderess. The expedition reaches its shattering climax when Enid is killed and Margery is left to raise her newborn daughter. The story's final image — an entomologist vowing to follow in Margery's footsteps — closes the circle of the golden beetle's power to inspire.

The core journey from childhood dream to New Caledonia triumph.

After her father's death, Margery and her mother move in with strict aunts; her mother dies soon afterward, leaving Margery alone.

Margery interviews Mundic for the assistant role; he grows angry and tells her she is a stupid woman who will die in a hole.

Mundic begins obsessively stalking Margery after she rejects him, determined to insert himself into her expedition.

Margery grows violently seasick for weeks aboard the ocean liner; Enid cheerfully nurses her through the illness.

Enid appears at the cabin door with blood on her skirt after a miscarriage; Margery flees in terror and tumbles down a flight of stairs.

Margery tracks down Enid at an American detention camp in Brisbane and persuades her to rejoin the expedition.

London police publish a notice seeking Nancy Collett, last seen leaving home carrying a red valise.

Enid steals a jeep and drives Margery wildly into the mountains; a policeman pursues them until they offer a bribe.

A cyclone pins Margery and Enid on the mountain for two days; Margery talks nonstop to keep Enid from giving up.

Mundic attends Mrs. Pope's party in Noumea and learns that Margery and Enid are based in the town of Poum.

Margery and Enid collect over a hundred rare insect specimens during their weeks of mountain expeditions.

Enid unexpectedly goes into labor; Margery overcomes her phobia of blood to help with the two-day delivery.

Enid names her newborn daughter Gloria Benson, giving the baby Margery's surname as a tribute.

Enid grows dangerously feverish after childbirth; Margery drives to Noumea to find a doctor despite not knowing how to drive.

Margery tackles Mundic and prevents him from turning the gun on himself; he falls backward and breaks his neck.

Before Margery's expedition can begin, her traumatic past and a dangerous rejected applicant named Mundic set forces in motion that will shadow her all the way to the Pacific. Margery and Enid's partnership is tested from the start, with illness, miscarriage, and clashing personalities threatening their plans at every stage of the ocean crossing. Once on the island, a string of further obstacles — a stolen jeep, a bribed policeman, and a battering cyclone — keeps the women in constant motion. The weeks of mountain searching test their endurance and forge a deep mutual trust, culminating in Enid's labor and the birth of baby Gloria. Enid's worsening health after the delivery forces Margery into an act of desperate improvisation that shows how far she has grown. The expedition's violent climax ultimately demands that Margery confront the stalker who has pursued her across the world, and she rises to meet him.

The obstacles, relationships, and hardships that defined the expedition.

Living with her aunts, young Margery mistakes a stranger in a park for her father and finally accepts her family is gone.

Young Margery's first visit to the Natural History Museum ignites her passion for beetles, feeling to her like a spiritual home.

Margery meets Professor Smith at the Museum as a teenager; he takes her dream of finding the golden beetle seriously and mentors her.

Margery confesses her love to Professor Smith, who reveals he has a wife and children; the two part and never meet again.

Mundic secretly stows away in the ship's boiler room to follow Margery's expedition without her knowledge.

Mundic observes Enid at foreign ports scanning overseas newspapers and buying a radio, revealing her constant dread of news from England.

Enid announces she is abandoning the expedition to start a new life in Brisbane with her new boyfriend Taylor.

London police publicly reveal that Nancy Collett traveled to Australia aboard a ship alongside an unidentified tall woman.

On their first camping night, Enid confesses she stole Taylor's gun to escape him; Margery makes her promise to bury it along the trail.

Near the mountain summit, Enid confides her troubled past to Margery, and Margery weeps for her lost family for the first time.

While burying Enid's dog Mr. Rawlings, Margery piles stones on the grave and feels herself finally laying to rest her grief over Professor Smith.

Enid discovers that someone has secretly dug up the revolver she buried along the mountain trail.

Mundic's perspective reveals that he accidentally killed Enid's dog Mr. Rawlings for barking at him and dropped the body into a ravine.

Dolly Wiggs gives Margery and Enid sanctuary in Noumea, shielding them from Mrs. Pope while a doctor treats both women.

After Enid's death, Margery hears baby Gloria crying and resolves to survive and raise the child for Enid's sake.

The emotional core of the novel lies in the secrets, traumas, and turning points that gradually reshape both Margery and Enid. Margery's buried grief over her father's suicide and her failed love for Professor Smith have defined decades of emotional isolation, while Enid has spent the entire voyage fleeing a murder charge she has never confessed to anyone. Clues to Enid's true identity accumulate during the ocean crossing, even as Mundic secretly shadows the expedition from the ship's boiler room. On the island, a series of disclosures — the stolen gun, the raw conversations at the mountain summit, and the discovery that the revolver has been recovered by an unknown hand — steadily raise the stakes. The truth about who killed Enid's dog and who now holds the weapon shifts the story toward its violent finale. After the tragedy, Margery's choice to live for baby Gloria marks her final and hard-won break from the grief that has defined her entire adult life.